Starlight wrote:Source of the post Sorry, I cannot yet see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, you've got most of the major big things done! You have the shells complete, and an actual, real room, fully delimited... not just lines on a screen and marks on the floor! You have power and HVAC... Those are all pretty good achievements. The light might be dim and distant, but it is there...
I didn't manage to see all that went on so I do not know what method they used when they decommisioned the unit in our old place nor did I see how much they needed to charge it up this time - nor into which unit they poured the gas charge. I blame it on my ignorance - when you don't know exactly what needs to be done it is hard to know what to look out for!
It's not your fault! You can't know everything about everything... They are the ones that should be telling you what they are doing! In fact, it's not generally known that this is even possible: most people just assume that when you take the pipes off, all of the gas just escapes into the air. Years ago, it used to be that way. But modern environmental laws have changed that, and most HVAC systems these days do have a method for doing that: You close off certain valves on the compressor, select a certain option on the remote control, and run the compressor until it has scavenged as much of the gas in the lines as possible, then you close another valve and shut off the compressor. That traps all of the refrigerant gas inside the compressor. Then when you re-install it , you are supposed to connect up the new lines, purge them with a little inert gas (eg., nitrogen), or a little of the refrigerant gas itself (frowned on!) to clear the air out of the pipes (you don't want that air to get into the compressor, since the moisture in the air does nasty things to the lubricating oil), then you tighten up the pipe connections, and open up the valves on the compressor to release the stored gas into the lines. There is often some loss from the original process, and some loss during storage if the valves are not tight, but you kep most of the gas like that, and only need to top it up a little at the end, in the final testing. You might not have seen it, but at the point when they started up the system, they should have attached a couple of meters to the compressor with rubber hoses, to check the pressure and flow. It's at that point that they would have seen the need to add a little extra gas to top up the system.... or maybe not, of the losses mere minimal, and it was still within spec. They would then bill you for the additional gas, if it was needed. And that's the main issue here: that gas is not cheap: it can amount to a large chunk of the total installation costs, if they have to refill it completely. So some unscrupulous operators bill you for the full charge of gas, even if they only used a little, or none! More honest ones will tell you about this in advance, then show you the gauges at the right time, and explain to you that the needle is pointing here, but should point there, then tell you how much gas you need to make the needle move, and how much that will cost you. That's what they should do... but like I say, not all of them do that.
I'm sort of hijacking your thread a bit here, Lester, for others following it in the future, or if you ever have to do something similar again yourself.
But that dim light at the far end of the tunnel, really is getting brighter, slowly...
- Stuart -